Gop Apologizes Over Voting Flier

Glossy Mailer Warns Against Touch-screens

An embarrassed state Republican Party apologized Thursday for a GOP campaign brochure that urged voters to use absentee ballots, undermining efforts by Gov. Jeb Bush and Secretary of State Glenda Hood to inspire confidence in new touch-screen voting machines.

Democratic Party officials and several civil rights groups eagerly pounced on the flier as either a laughable foul-up or a sign that maybe Republican leaders also question the reliability of the ATM-like equipment.

Bush, Hood and many GOP legislators have been saying for weeks that the machines are accurate and the state is ready to run a fair election.

"Have no doubt that we are confident of Florida's elections system, and that means the entire electoral system is accurate and secure," said Joseph Agostini, spokesman for the Florida Republican Party. "We regret any misunderstanding over this issue."

Democrats, civil-liberties organizations and voter-rights groups have been trying to appeal a state rule that prohibits manual recounts of the touchscreen voting machines, which leave no paper record, and in many cases have been urging voters to use absentee voting as a way to keep such a paper record.

Absentee ballots are recorded by optical scan machines that detect pencil marks on paper to determine a voter's intent.

Broward County assistant elections supervisor Gisela Salas said Broward County voters had already requested more than 16,000 absentee ballots by Thursday morning.

More than 15,000 Palm Beach County voters have already requested absentee ballots for the Aug. 31 primary election, Palm Beach County Supervisor Theresa LePore said. That's more than twice as many voters as was recorded at the same time of the year before the 2002 gubernatorial primary elections.

"We do have an increase in the number of absentee ballots requested," LePore said. "But I can't say it's directly attributable to people not wanting to use" touch-screen machines.

The Republican apology stemmed from a glossy mailer paid for by the GOP and sent to Miami voters in a hotly contested state House district primary race between two Republicans. Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach are among 15 counties who switched from punch-card ballots to touch-screens after the 2000 presidential recount.

The flier featured a smiling President George W. Bush and urged voters not to take a chance with the touch-screen machines.

"The liberal Democrats have already begun their attacks and the new electronic voting machines do not have a paper ballot to verify your vote in case of a recount," the front page of the mailer reads. "Make sure your vote counts, order your absentee ballot today."

But the governor and secretary of state have stood fast in their support of the machines.

"Have they not had the opportunity to talk with Governor Jeb Bush or Glenda Hood?" asked Florida ACLU director Howard Simon.

Simon spoke from his car Thursday as he drove to Key West, where he was to take part in a two-day meeting of 50 ACLU lawyers to discuss, in part, Florida's problems with the new touch-screen voting machines.

Those concerns heightened when it was discovered this week that, in Miami-Dade County, the electronic records of the Democratic gubernatorial primary between Janet Reno and Bill McBride had been largely lost because of two 2003 computer crashes.

A team of experts from the secretary of state's office arrived in Miami-Dade on Thursday, said Seth Kaplan, a spokesman for the Miami-Dade County Department of Elections.

"They are trying to understand what happened to make sure it won't happen again," Kaplan said. He would not specify how the team was going about its work. Similar problems have not been found in Broward or Palm Beach counties.

The governor's spokeswoman, Jill Bratina, said Bush, who is on a trade mission in Canada, had not seen the flier but would not approve of its criticism of touch-screen voting.

"He does not agree with any message that is going to criticize the touch-screen system because it works," Bratina said. "We had elections in 2002 on electronic machines. ... They work, and voters should be comfortable using them."

Democratic Party officials aren't so sure that it was an innocent mistake. They blasted the GOP for issuing the brochure.

"It wasn't only inappropriate, it was outrageous," said state Sen. Ron Klein, a Boca Raton Democrat who was reached by telephone at the Democratic National Convention in Boston. "If the voting equipment isn't a problem, then don't create political literature and issue political statements which are designed to scare people or intimidate them."

Leaders of several liberal interest groups said they don't accept the apologies.

"It stinks," said Sharon Lettman-Pacheco of the People for the American Way Foundation. "The damage is done. There is no time now to flip-flop. I don't care about the apologies. They just need to put in place an audit trail to make sure every vote gets counted."